Why Secrets Are So Hard to Keep & The Curious Quirks of Language - SYSK Choice

Something You Should Know

This episode of 'Something You Should Know' explores the psychology of secrets, the evolutionary roots of curiosity, and fascinating quirks of language. It begins with insights on eye

Key takeaways

• Secrets can cause physical and psychological harm, potentially contributing to stress-related illnesses and even cancer due to prolonged internal strain.
• The urge to reveal secrets stems from evolutionary curiosity and social bonding mechanisms like gossip, which historically helped maintain group cohesion.

Main topics

• The psychological impact of keeping secrets
• Evolutionary reasons for human curiosity and gossip

Notable quotes

"A secret is an act that you commit, that you do, to withhold information that could see you societally ostracized or see your status drop."

"We became an incredibly inquisitive species... because curiosity helped us survive and pass on our genes."

Conclusion

Secrets are deeply woven into human psychology and society, shaped by evolution, emotion, and cultural norms. While they can harm

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) There is one word I think gets people in trouble with money. It's probably. I'm probably spending about this much every month. I'm probably saving enough. I'm probably on track for retirement. Probably is not a financial plan. I've been using Monarch. It's a personal finance app that puts your whole financial picture in one place. And it replaces probably with actual numbers. For example, Monarch showed me that our spending last month jumped about 30% from the month before. 30%. We had some home repairs, but none of the bills seemed like a big hit at the time. But put them all together, and wow. But I didn't realize how much our spending had jumped until Monarch showed me. And I think that's how money can get away from you. Speaker 1 (0:51) It's not necessarily one giant expense that sets off alarm bells. It's all the things that add up that you don't really notice. That's what I like about Monarch. You can see your spending, accounts, investments, and savings goals all in one place and see what's really going on with your money. If you're operating on probably, maybe it's time to find out. Write your own money story with Monarch. Use code SYSK at Monarch.com. to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at Monarch.com with code S-Y-S-K. Speaker 1 (1:36) Today on Something You Should Know, some important insight into how you view other people. Then, secrets. We all keep secrets, and they can cause us harm. They can cause ulcers, they can cause, apparently, cancers. Certain cancers or cancer can arise from the stress of keeping a secret. And it causes more harm than just stress. It's not just stress. There is something particular to the secret. Speaker 1 (2:02) Also, are there animals who are truly monogamous for life? And interesting quirks about our language, like the letter A. It comes from hieroglyphics. Do you know what it represents? An ox's head. When you write a capital letter A, that point at the top is the nose. The lines at the bottom, those are the ears of the horns. And the line that goes across, that was where the horns and the ears came out of. And you can do this with a lot of our letters if you trace them back through historical documents. All this today on Something You Should Know. Speaker 1 (2:35) Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hello. Welcome to Something You Should Know. And if the subject of keeping secrets or not keeping secrets is fascinating to you, and I think it is to most people, you're going to find this episode really interesting. We start today, though, with... Eye contact. Some people have difficulty making eye contact while other people overdo it. So what's the norm? Well, it depends on the situation. In a group setting, 3 to 5 seconds is considered normal engaged eye contact. Keeping someone in your sights longer than that could be perceived as staring, especially if you're not the one who's talking. Less than that, though, and we might think you're just not interested. Speaker 1 (3:32) In one-on-one situations, the gaze can last up to 10 seconds before we glance away. But you also have to factor in the time not looking. If you spend more than 50% of the conversation not making eye contact, that's risky. Because if you're spending too much time looking elsewhere, you can seem disinterested. And that is something you should know. Speaker 1 (3:59) Secrets are fascinating. Just about everybody has a secret, or two. We keep our own secrets, and maybe we hold on to secrets that other people have told us, but we're not supposed to tell anyone. Well, why do they tell us if we're not supposed to tell anyone, knowing how hard it is to keep a secret? And why is it so hard to keep a secret? Do they weigh heavy on us? Is there some benefit, some relief? When you unload your secrets? Well, it turns out secrets are studied a lot, and here to share what the latest research says about you and your secrets is Andrew Gold. He's an investigative journalist, podcaster, and filmmaker who has made and presented documentaries for the BBC and HBO. He hosts a podcast called On the Edge with Andrew Gold, and he is author of the book The Psychology of Secrets. Hi, Andrew. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Speaker 1 (4:56) Thank you so much for having me. So first of all, what is a secret? What is your working definition of that word? So we're all on the same page here. I think I like to try and define a secret by what it's not. And there's two things that are very close to it that it is not. And one of them is privacy. And that makes a secret very much dependent on its time and place. Because something... that is private is something typically that is maybe accepted in a particular society. If you had a couple hundred years ago a certain number of slaves, this would have been considered private. If you had that today, that would be a secret because it transgresses societal norms. It would be completely insane. And so you would have to keep that secret because morally you would be judged were that to get out. Speaker 1 (5:49) Sometimes things that seem maybe less salacious on the surface are actually more secretive than private. For example, if a couple has sex quite often, this is just a private matter. Even if they have quite a lot of sex, it's private. So sex we think of as salacious, this should be a secret really, but it's not because you expect couples to have sex or a lot of sex. Maybe that's a wrong expectation. If a couple never has sex, That is actually a secret. So the boring one of, oh, we never have sex, that's a secret because it goes against, it runs counter to our expectations of couples, which is a problem, I think. I mean, it's something that is talked about to death, of course, Instagram and social media and the way we portray ourselves, the way we lie to our friends about how often, it doesn't have to be sex, of course, but whatever it is we're getting involved in, we lie. Speaker 1 (6:44) and we make ourselves look good. And all that does is cause a great deal of shame in people who don't have that kind of life and feel they have to keep it secret when really, you know, there's a great spectrum of what is normal. There's no right or wrong. And that's really sad. Another thing a secret is not necessarily is a lie. These are two slightly different things. But all lies have secrets in them. The secret is the truth that the lie is not telling us, but not all secrets are lies. You don't have to lie necessarily to keep your secret. So I guess I would just say a secret is an act that you commit, that you do, to withhold information that could see you societally ostracized or see your status drop in the eyes of the person you tell that secret to. And why is it if you know that somebody has a secret? Speaker 1 (7:35) and you don't know what the secret is but you know they're holding on to one why does it become so important and so critical that you find it out Well, I think that comes down to our evolutionary biology, which I just find all this stuff fascinating. Particularly, I mean, you and I are journalists, podcasters. We're trying to find a certain truth. People listen to us because they want that truth. And I'm sure that goes back to tribal times where those who exhibited curiosity would have done better in their tribes and survived to pass on their genes over hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years. Speaker 1 (8:13) more and more of us who survived, obviously, and passed on our genes were curious. We were also very gossipy. Initially, when we were in small tribes, we would groom one another, as monkeys do, to sort of socially bond. As we grew too large for that as a group, that became too time consuming. There were just too many of us and we couldn't all be grooming one another. And so gossip appears to have filled that hole. And gossip became the social cohesion or the glue that held us together. So when you mix that gossip that held us together, this social cohesive glue with the curiosity that helped us find new shelters and new food and all different lands and things like that, we became an incredibly inquisitive. Speaker 1 (9:06) species. And I love that because that is something that I don't know how you feel. But if I think about friends of mine or people that I admire, it's not necessarily intelligent or funny or this or that. It's curious people, people who are not concerned necessarily for societal norms, as I was saying before, they don't, they maybe flout them. They constantly, they go, but why is this the rule? Why is this the law? Why this and that? Anyway, that's... Speaker 1 (9:33) part of what gave us this great curiosity to get secrets out of other people. There is of course as well the sense in which secrets are a great mechanism for power, to keep power over other people. So we want to get secrets out of people to reduce any power they might hold over us. And once we have their secrets, we have power over them. So there are all sorts of dynamics going on that make us very curious and pretty desperate to get the truth out of people. Does everybody have secrets? Speaker 1 (10:03) Apparently so. Every person keeps, I can't remember the exact number, it's like seven or eight or nine or 13, I think it might have been, secrets. And that seems crazy because we don't think of ourselves like that. Some of the secrets we keep, for example, might be a romantic secret. You don't tell your lover that you actually prefer a different kind of position or something or that you are attracted to somebody at work. There are all kinds of things that we keep down that you might not even think about. it being a secret, but actually they are. So we all keep them and they have quite a dramatic effect on us at times. What kind of dramatic effect? They can cause ulcers, they can cause apparently cancers, certain cancers or cancer can arise from the stress of keeping a secret. It's really quite a particular thing and it causes more harm than just Speaker 1 (10:56) stress. It's not just stress. There is something particular to the secret that causes more harm to us. And I think the reason for that is, again, going back to tribal times, a tribe that had individuals within it that were prone to keeping secrets, who could keep secrets without harm, without feeling harm, without feeling bad, that tribe would not do so well. Because ultimately, you need a mix of personalities, but you certainly need people who are going to be incentivized to share their food with you or to share where the best bit of shelter is or to help you in some sort of way. So it feels like there is a biological mechanism, which they call the fever model, that makes you feel bad when you're keeping something secret in a really unique way that very few other stresses cause you. Speaker 1 (11:50) The thing with this fever model, it's a little bit like any fever that you might get. The body makes itself uninhabitable for the virus and obviously you suffer tremendously but hopefully don't die because then it's pointless, isn't it? But the fever model does the same thing with secrets. It makes your body feel horrible. It makes you feel shame and just terrible illnesses afflict you until… you get that secret out because it wants you to get the secrets out. It also wants to encourage you not to keep too